


I Can't Go On (I'll Go On)

by bonn



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Implied/Referenced Character Death, siblings dealing with death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 05:53:12
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8238277
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonn/pseuds/bonn
Summary: Everyone deals with loss in their own way.





	1. PETUNIA

**Author's Note:**

> Title SHAMELESSLY pilfered from the 2009 movie Bandslam xoxo gossip bonn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Lily)

There’s a letter, tucked into the folds of the blanket the child is cocooned in. A letter, signed Albus Dumbledore, and it’s got to be fake, it’s got to, except—

Except there’s an extra little boy under her roof, where before there was only one. She reads the letter, over and over until the words swim, folds it and unfolds it so many times the parchment starts to disintegrate beneath her fingers. She reads it, and she reads it, and she reads it, because she doesn’t know what else to do, and her fingers fumble, and she reads it until she has it memorised, and then she reads it again, and again.

And there’s a part of her, still, even now as the front door clicks open, signalling Vernon’s return from work, that doesn’t believe it. This, see this is just like Lily, to pull this joke, to dump Harry for a few days to see what Petunia would do. Except it’s not, really, like her at all. A rabbit, maybe, or an outlandish coatrack, but not a child, not her own child.

“Where’s tea?” Vernon calls from the kitchen, having gone to investigate what his wife had prepared for his dinner. “Petunia?” He appears in the doorway to their sitting room, but he doesn’t approach her, collapsed on the settee. “What’s the matter, why’ve you not put tea on?” he demands.

She looks up at him blankly, and he follows her gaze to the playpen in the corner of the room, where Dudley sits, unimpressed, staring unhappily at another little boy. There’s a barricade of toys around their son, out of reach of the other boy, and even as they watch, the smaller, darker child crawls forward to take one.

Dudley jumps to action, slapping him away, and drawing the particular toy – a plastic truck – closer to himself.

“Petunia?” Vernon prompts, but he knows who this child belongs to, knows it from the colour of the boy’s skin.

“They’re dead,” Petunia whispers, staring at the rug underneath the coffee table unblinkingly. She hasn’t cried, not yet.

“Dead?”

“Lily, and, and—,” she shudders.

“And that makes _him_ ,” Vernon spits, gesturing to the boy, “our problem, does it?”

“ _Yes_ ,” says Petunia with an unexpected ferocity. “Yes,” she repeats, quieter. Vernon spots the letter in her hands and moves to take it, but she draws it to her chest. “We can’t… he’s here to stay,” she says, and looks up at him with a determination that ends the debate. “He stays,” she says firmly, and that’s the end of it.

It’s spitting, as she gets off the train, steps onto the deserted platform of Cokeworth Railway Station. The train rattles on, on to Middlestow, on to Derby. An umbrella, _how_ did she forget an umbrella? She gathers the itchy wool coat around her, and shudders, a result of the increasing rain and the horrid fabric – an insult of a Christmas gift from Yvonne Horbery, but the darkest coat she could muster from her closet last minute.

She barely remembers the town, five years separated from it, but her feet know how to take her to her old house, and she looks up at it, empty of her parents, empty of her life, and then the porch light flickers to life and she’s off, down the lane toward Spinner’s End. Her sensible heels click on the footpath (and everything about Petunia is sensible; her sensible style and her sensible husband and her sensible life), and the King’s Inn is alive with young adults celebrating the end of the week.

Petunia ducks her head, half against the rain and half against the hoard of familiar faces in the pub, and she hurries past, because she can’t, she could never; never find herself face to face with her schoolmates, never look them in the eye and tell them that Lily’s dead, actually, with a telling crack in her voice.

The poor half of the town creeps up on her, and all of a sudden she’s stepping around overflowing rubbish bins and pinching her nose against the sweet stench of fermented garbage, and here it is. Spinner’s End, the horrid street she spent the large part of her childhood steering well clear of. She doesn’t know which door is Snape’s, but she can guess. There’s a patch of pavement, three yards around, clean as the streets of her side of town.

She’s sure she’ll wake up the whole street by hammering on the door, but she does it anyway. She bangs, and she bangs, and her heartbeat is thundering in the raw skin of her fists, and after a minute, or an hour, or a day, the door flies open, and there he is, an unlit cigarette dangling from his thin lips.

“ _What_?” he snarls, and she takes an involuntary step backwards.

“Don’t _what_ me,” she snarls back. “Is it true, then?”

Snape’s expression softens for half a second, eyes watery, then it’s razor sharp, an insult in waiting as he lights his cigarette. “Like you care,” he says coolly, blowing smoke in her face.

“Of course I care,” she shrieks, and he glances down the street, wary of his neighbours, “she’s my _sister_!”

“Oh, she’s your sister now that she’s dead,” he scoffs, “fucking typical.”

“How _dare_ you,” she hisses, and shoves him with all her might. He raises his hand as if to hit her, but catches himself with a sneer. “At least she loved me.” And he really does hit her, the hollow sound of the slap echoing in the empty street. She lifts a hand to her cheek, brushing her sopping hair back and feeling the heat radiating from the place he struck. She looks up at him from behind her dripping fringe, and fixes him with a loathing glare. “It’s all your fault! If you’d never taken her away from me—”

And here Snape interrupts, “I never did anything of the sort.”

“Yes well if it wasn’t for _your lot_ ,” and she bites back her old Derby accent, snaking out in her anger, “she’d’ve never’ve been in harm’s way in the first place.”

“I tried to save her life,” Snape chokes angrily, but Petunia shouts over him.

“Like fuck you did! Dumbledore wrote me a nice little letter explaining exactly what happened, and how, and dumped me with her kid while he was at it!”

Snape has his wand drawn now, fury and grief mingling in his face. “I think it would be best if you went home, Petunia,” he says through gritted teeth. “Run home to your tiny little Muggle life.” He flicks the butt of his cigarette away, and slams the door in her face. She gapes at it, struggling to find some sort of logical response, and comes up short.

The platform is empty as always, and for a moment it feels like the world is too. She finds an empty carriage when the engine pulls into the station, and she settles herself into a corner with a view of the (rather appropriately, she thinks to herself) grey sky.

The train rattles south, and Petunia folds her shoulders in, and brings her knees to her chest, and she lets herself cry.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> xoxo gossip bonn


	2. ABERFORTH

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Ariana)

He has a carriage all to himself. He has a carriage all to himself, which seems like it should be celebrated as an achievement, but he’s not really in any mood for celebration right now, or ever, actually.

He never thought he had friends, but he’d been wrong. He _had_ had friends, actually, but now he doesn’t. He sees them, the boys with whom he’d been friendly, scurrying away at the sight of him, gazes averted. Intervention from their parents, most likely. _Stay away from that Aberforth, he’s bad news_.

Death’s a curse that none of them want near, and he’s cursed double.

There’s a tapping on the door, and it slides open. “Anything to eat?” asks the Trolley Lady, and Aberforth turns to gaze at her blankly. “Take these,” she says softly, and hands over a parcel wrapped in waxed paper. “Your mum was a good one. I was sorry to hear about her passing.” He looks at her blankly. His _mother_? What does she matter to him now? “These were her favourite.”

Ab takes the parcel, and thanks the lady, and turns to stare back out the window. They’re somewhere in the midlands now, and it can only be just after one, but it’s already getting dark, storm clouds gathering.

He skips the feast, because he’d rather sit alone in a tree than alone in the Great Hall. He casts an Impervius charm on himself and climbs up, up, as high as he can, up a tree on the very outskirts of the forest. He pulls the parcel of food from his cloak pocket.

Half a dozen slightly squashed Bakewell puddings sit in his lap, and he laughs, a watery chuckle that dies in his throat. Yeah, his mum did like Bakewell puddings, but Ariana more.

He sits, wedged in between two branches in the rain, his waterproof charm slipping by the minute, and he savours every bite as he becomes more and more sodden, weighed down by his mother and sister, and his waterlogged clothes alike.

He breathes in, a long, deep breath. Wonders if anyone’s noticed his absence. Breathes out, endless and silent in the bottomless night. Wonders if he cares. The consequences seem so… far away. He’s untouchable, in his mind, out of reach of the fingers of Hogwarts’ authority. So he’ll have a detention or two, or he’ll miss the first Hogsmeade weekend of the term. It doesn’t matter, none of it matters.

He isn’t sad, anymore, and he thinks that before long he won’t be angry either. Not actively, like he is now, exhausted with the effort and the burden of it. He stuffs the wax paper into his pocket and climbs down the tree, and then he gives the trunk a kick for good measure.

Another, and another, and a punch, and another kick, and he doesn’t care, he doesn’t _care_ what he’s broken, because he’s broken inside, and that’s not so easily mended. He limps back up to the castle, and it’s a journey so long and laborious that he has to rest on the front steps.

The castle is deserted, the students in bed, new and old alike. He arrives at the Hospital Wing sometime around two in the morning, and Matron Harris fixes him with a disapproving stare as she answers his knocking.

“Now, are you going to go back to your dormitory tonight?” she asks, eyebrows raised as she mends the fingers of his left hand.

“Don’t know the password,” he tells her, and she conjures a set of flannel pyjamas with a neat flick of her wand.

“Sit still for ten minutes, then you can get changed in the bathroom over there.” He nods as he glances at the doorway she’s indicating, and she narrows her eyes once more before returning to her quarters.

He lets his sodden cloak pool at his feet as he leans over the basin, and splashes water from the jug on his face. He looks up and—

And there he is, with his uncombed hair, auburn like his brother’s, his father’s. But there are his eyes, and those were hers, and the chin too, and the spattering of freckles down his nose – the nose he made sure he doesn’t share with Albus anymore. He looks in the mirror, and he sees himself, bright and grubby, but he sees Ariana too, and that – that’s enough to keep him going, right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> xoxo gossip bonn


	3. GEORGE

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (Fred)

There are mirrors, so many mirrors, and he can’t remember there being this goddamn many of them _before_. They left the windows shut, before they left for the Burrow, all those weeks ago, and the whole place is musty as he walks around and counts them. There’s a mirror in the hall, and over the mantel and two in the bathroom, and one in the first bedroom, and one in the other first bedroom, and why the _hell_ do they have so many mirrors—

Does _he_ have so many mirrors. He has so many mirrors, and none of them show him his own face.

He tears down their blanket fort to cover them all, and the twinge of regret is nothing compared to the relief of not being haunted by himself, his brother, his loss.

He sleeps in the living room, on the floor, because he can’t bring himself to claim one of the bedrooms for his own. He stares at the wall and imagines the long shadows of himself and his brother bumping into each other as they each tried to sneak into the other’s room, that first night.

There’s no escaping the crushing emptiness of a room shared with no one now, not like then, when Fred was only ever a matter of seconds away. This is it, the first night he’s spent alone, completely alone, in his entire life.

He doesn’t sleep.

There’s a soft knock on the door, and then a sharper one, and a hiss of _Don’t be a prat, for Merlin’s—_

“George?” Ginny calls, louder, intended for him to hear. “Mum’s sent us with a casserole.”

George rolls his head around, but doesn’t move from the floor. The door clicks open, and there’s a commotion in the hall outside, and then only Ginny steps inside. She puts the dish down on the settee, and sits cross-legged next to him, and takes the hand closest to her.

“Mum wanted to bring it round herself but I wouldn’t let her,” she says, and her voice is so soft that he barely hears it as she runs her thumb back and forth along the back of his hand. “It’s a bit mad at home.”

“Yeah, I reckon it would be,” George croaks, and Ginny’s grip tightens. “I know,” he whispers, and he doesn’t look at her. She wipes away the tears in her eyes with the heel of her palm, and squeezes his hand once more, before standing and picking up the casserole again.

“Percy’s here too,” she says, and he sits bolt upright, for the first time in days. He reaches up and feels stubble on his chin, and Percy strides in, deflating as he catches sight of his brother.

George stares up at the elder Weasley blankly, and his eyes are so depthless, so empty. Percy sinks into the couch, and looks out the window, and down at the coffee table, which is covered haphazardly with a towel, because it’s a mirror of sorts too. He moves to fold it, for something to do, but he finds his brother’s hand, iron tight on his wrist.

“No,” George says, deep and definite. “No.”

“No,” Ginny agrees, and she shoots Percy a pointed look. “I’m going to take this to the kitchen.”

George doesn’t let go of Percy’s wrist, and Ginny doesn’t reappear.

“Come on, Georgie,” Percy says, twisting uncomfortably. George lets go, reluctantly, flexing his fingers and slouching back down. “There we go then.”

George frowns slightly, and picks at the hem of his jumper, aggressively. “Get up.”

“What?”

“Get up, that’s Fred’s…you can’t sit there.”

“That’s not fair,” Percy scoffs, but he stands up anyway.

“No, it’s not fair,” George agrees viciously, and he stands, chest to chest with his older brother, and Percy shrinks back, eyes dark. “There’s a lot of things that aren’t fair flying around right now.”

Percy straightens his glasses, and the light from the lamp reflects back off them, and Percy doesn’t know _how_ , doesn’t know what to do to stop the fist colliding with his face. He spits blood, and George just spits.

“Do you have _any_ idea what I would give to have been the one? The one there, the one who saw him last?” he spits. “I would give _anything_. All the gold I own, all my success, my life,” his voice rises, cracks, “ _your_ life,” and Percy flinches, worse than when George hit him.

“Percy, go dish out dinner for all three of us.” Ginny has her eyebrows raised, a cup of tea in each hand.

“He was my brother too,” Percy starts, heated, “I get to be upset too!”

“Percy,” she snaps, a warning, and Percy ducks his head, and shuffles into the kitchen, while George burns a hole in the carpet with his gaze. “Here,” she says, and forces the cup under his nose.

He takes it obediently, and takes a sip more out of habit than desire. “This isn’t mine,” he says automatically, handing it back. “It’s…” He looks at her, and swallows hard.

“I’m so sorry. George, I’ve only ever…” _made tea for both of you._

Percy appears, and it’s a mercy as the three plates fall softly onto the table, cutlery clattering down after them. Ginny tips Fred’s tea down the bathroom basin, and then she pulls George toward the table.

They sit, and they eat their dinner, and Percy mumbles _sorry_ as Ginny gestures him ahead of her out the door. She hugs George tight and gives him a sad smile, and she’s leaving too, with a last call of, “you know where we are. All of us. I love you,” and a last hand squeeze, and he’s alone, him and the memory of his brother.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> xoxo gossip bonn

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading i love to die (: 
> 
> a four-part part ii coming eventually


End file.
